Awesome! A movie has been announced! And what more, this doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a movie for the sake of having a movie like with Full Metal Alchemist, Ao no Exorcist or Star Driver, but this really continues with the story that this episode left off with. This episode wrapped up the past arc, but it left plenty of villains still alive, plus the issue of the pirates deciding their course still hasn’t been solved yet. My guess is that that will be the main focus of the movie.
Now, as for this episode, the creators went for the action-packed ending: this entire episode was dedicated to an over the top battle against the strange woman who has been shooting down pirate ships. They used a bunch of clever decoys and the pirates that Marika invited played a good role in it. This episode didn’t have the crazy revelations that showed completely new sides of the characters and it did remain a pretty standard ending and I wouldn’t label it as the best ending of the season, but still, the episodes leading up to it were the best of the entire season.
The aftermath with Iron Beard was excellent by the way. Like many people suspected, he is Marika’s father. In the end it turned out that he wanted to hand over the reins of the Bentenmaru over to Marika, so he came up with the story of food poisoning in order to give her the chance to be a pirate. Ririka very likely was in on the joke, and she very likely figured that now that Marika has gone her own way, it’s time for her to go back to pirating with her husband.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I dont think Ririka was in on it intially, I think she only found out when she decided to go back to space and saw who was watching that meeting.
I think to sum up:
* Marika was invited to Galactic Empire space, ‘a bigger pond’ so to speak.
* Looks like the former president wants to try her hand at pirating with the schools yacht. Was a bit unclear but I think they were on the way to the battle but arrived late.
* Marika has another year of school to go
* The pirates havent decided whether to become true pirates but are on their way to making that decision.
* Didnt resolve the true identity of the woman and Ironbeards true official mission.
* Chiaki’s father basically said he wasnt retiring soon and she had to make her mind up which crew to serve in, her permanently transferring schools could be seen as her choosing Marika.
I agree that Ririka probably didn’t have a heads-up about what was going to happen, buy I think when Misa dropped the “food posioning” line on her, she probably figured out the general outlines. Even though they appear to have been separated for some time, she reacted TOO causally to news of the death of the father of her only child.
It hasnt really demonstrated affection between them at least onscreen, its more like a fling or one night stand between a captain and a subordinate that produced an unwanted kid in the portrayal. I mean she has never been called mom and theres never been any portrayed regret that she never met her father or serious interest in her finding out what he was like personally only professionally.
*Affection between the parents and from daughter to father, thers been plenty of affection from daughter to mother but more like a big sister or step mom relationship.